Flooding is one of the most common and costly hazards in the United States and other countries, occurring even in extremely dry areas. A fluvial flood is an event involving an overflow of the natural or artificial banks of one or more bodies of water having a current. Flooding typically results from large scale weather systems generating prolonged rainfall, rapid snow melt or on-shore winds that temporarily produce a partial or complete inundation of normally dry land areas. There are a range of flood types or levels determined by the probability that a volume of water capable of flooding a particular area will enter during a return period (e.g., 1 year, 50 years, 100 years, etc.). For example, an annual flood is a type of flooding event expected to occur in any given year, and a 100 year flood has a one percent chance of occurring in any given year.
Flood modeling may be used to determine the probability of a flooding event for a particular area for risk assessment, planning, mitigation, prevention, insurance portfolio analysis, damage estimation, and/or the like. Generally, conventional flood models are derived from elevation models. Stated differently, based on the assumption that water flows downhill, many traditional flood models accumulate water in crevices or areas having low elevations, including streams, to determine a volume of water accumulated in a given area for an input of water, thereby determining a depth of flooding for a particular point during a return period. Often, with conventional flood modeling, there is a tradeoff between resolution and accuracy of the flood model and time and resources expended in creating the flood model. For example, some traditional flood models are highly dense, involving multiple high resolution datasets, such as elevation datasets, for each location point in various geographic areas. Creating such flood models often involves considerable resources expended over several years. Conversely, other traditional models involve low resolution datasets. Such models may have a lower accuracy but may be created using less time and resources.
It is with these observations in mind, among others, that various aspects of the present disclosure were conceived and developed.